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Dear Mother I spent a black winter In the womb of curse Where death finds Man in solitude With roads wrapped round his head [. . .] And because of the heavy field I left one of my legs And my youngest daughter’s tears In dust Buçpapaj’s words are filled with a fiery sadness. He is bold and unapologetic in his grief. In “The Night Over Kosova,” he tells of the hatesparked fires that destroyed homes, hearts, and such beauty. Buçpapaj mourns in tears and flame, and through him, his nation finds a voice. Buçpapaj’s poems are generally short, usually less than a page, and they tend to end suddenly, with strong, yet understated aphorisms, the effect of which is startling — much like the effect of the war’s losses on the people. This is no accident. It also pulls the reader’s attention to the poignant conclusion of each poem. Characteristically short lines work well with this technique; the devices reflect each other in form and in effect. Short lines, at times, have the effect of making the speaker sound as though he is gasping for breath, as though wounded or exhausted (as he is in “A Letter to My Mother”). The short, enjambed lines combined with virtually nonexistent punctuation can also accelerate the reading of the poem, and this effect, combined with the often sudden conclusions, leaves us somewhat dizzy — like running off the edge of the earth into space — at which point we realize what Buçpapaj had in mind all along: to yank the solid foundation from beneath us in order to make us feel what he and so many others felt at the great losses they suffered. With the poems’ conclusions, and often within the poems as well, one finds oneself soaring off the edge of the earth in defiance of gravity, and this changes one’s conception of “necessary” footing, just as the great losses due to war must have affected those who suffered it. What charms me most about this book is the way Buçpapaj employs such fresh, stunning images within his metaphor. I have selected only three of the numerous examples from the book. They speak for themselves: Dusk Had fallen from the trees Down on school children’s bags The sound of the hearth’s ashes Rolling round the world (from “Kosovë 1999”) The Big Marsh Still eating land from under The ribs of the dead (from “The Field of Tplani”) Having the color of North Winds The river was the wind’s portrait Standing over trees (From “The Wind’s Portrait”) Buçpapaj employs everything he loves and everything he hates in order to paint a precise portrait of his broken heart. The pages overflow with sunsets, mountains, birds, books, and corn fields. But we also see abandoned ruins, exodus engulfed in darkness, the muddy, frozen hands of children, and the dead beneath a tangle of burnt, labyrinthine roads of a ravaged land. The dead remind us that, despite the season of renewal, some of the most valuable losses will never be regained. As the poet writes in “Total Disillusion,” “Homeland has abandoned / His own home.” The poems are haunted, as the poet’s heart is haunted — riddled with ghosts of the lost and an atmosphere of appalled, exhausted silence. In the shivers of the poet’s heart, we see the dead: Translation Review 79
Those already weeping In graves Are at the bottom of the meadow Beaten by winds And afraid of cows (from “Ghastly Silence”) O abandoned trains Take me to the dead Weeping under the rain We have to reconcile them (from “The Southern Trains”) Despite the fact that the book ends with the prospect of destruction, I do not sense a fear of that destruction. Rather, there is victory in the written word and its freeing power: Here rests our dream That forbidden freedom had collapsed [. . .] We’ll go to the ruins to unbury FREEDOM And feed on IT our papers written Amidst mud On the day we defeated fear (from “The Square”) “Fear had conquered the world,” the poet says in “Black Fear.” Perhaps, then, the invisible victory is in overcoming fear and thus freeing the spirit of mankind to profess the truth — which is precisely what Buçpapaj does in writing The Invisible Victory. Hope hasn’t abandoned me In this ward of horror Light a wooden fire Over this desolate world Say prayers for me in Albanian For I am alive and I don’t want to lose (from “A Letter to my Mother”) In poems such as “The Wind’s Statue,” we find another irony: the violence was aimed at the poet, as he stands for all who require freedom of expression. Yet the voices of the people survived in him, while the people themselves were murdered. The victory is evident in the fact that, despite their deaths, they were not silenced, and that is because one survivor with a voice and a gift was not afraid. Many more after me will sing praises of Mujë Buçpapaj’s great work. The Invisible Victory is a gorgeous, timeless victory. v 80 Translation Review
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Albanian Literatu
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Elbasan and spent almost two decade
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on several occasions for the Nobel
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in the translation of Leonard Fox.
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Neither a Wound nor a Song: Poetry
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Minnesota: Graywolf Press 2008) 401
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IK: Writing is generally a multidim
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IK: Translators ought to know both
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coming from an isolated Stalinist c
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translation of his works. He is qui
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Kadare which, on a grander scale, b
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ordinary free indirect style, but i
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modernization. As students of the l
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and deposited in a bank vault in Pa
Page 31 and 32: A R C A D E P U B L I S H I N G P R
Page 33 and 34: the poet Naim Frashëri. His moving
Page 35 and 36: 32 Translation Review
Page 37 and 38: feniks [Phoenix City] in 1970), and
Page 39 and 40: wake of a bad breakup: “You are E
Page 41 and 42: weeks later in Washington, D.C., wo
Page 43 and 44: “O man (owner) of the tower/turre
Page 45 and 46: THE POETIC VISION OF PREÇ ZOGAJ IN
Page 47 and 48: where he graduated in Albanian Lang
Page 49 and 50: down the lines that went through my
Page 51 and 52: philosophy. Being Albanian-born mys
Page 53 and 54: similar social characteristics and
Page 55 and 56: COME NEARER, JOYFUL HOUR OF THE POE
Page 57 and 58: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSLATI
Page 59 and 60: the pain and the dark premonition s
Page 61 and 62: TRANSLATING ALBANIAN FOLK POETRY: A
Page 63 and 64: preserving the metrical rhythm, as
Page 65 and 66: available. I believe that some of t
Page 67 and 68: the ancient scrolls were not, after
Page 69 and 70: quarter century, as new worlds have
Page 71 and 72: TRANSLATING GJERGJ FISHTA’S EPIC
Page 73 and 74: (take out “so gently,”) 275 In
Page 75 and 76: BOOK REVIEWS Marku, Rudolf. Allahla
Page 77 and 78: of Albania’s communist oriental-b
Page 79 and 80: There is no prophecy, things happen
Page 81: writing the book, he lives that pas
Page 85: (Wauconda, Illinois, 2004) and Gjer
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